Beauty in Hard Times: Africa’s Lipstick Effect
What do women hold onto when everything else feels uncertain? Across Africa, one answer rises again and again: beauty rituals. In times of economic pressure, when inflation climbs and currencies wobble, many women continue to invest in small but powerful acts of adornment—braids, gele, fragrance oils, or a few yards of fabric. Economists call it […]
TEMESGEN: A Language of Fabric, A Feeling of Home
In the heart of Stockholm, thousands of miles from the red earth and golden light of Addis Ababa, a quiet revolution in fashion is unfolding. TEMESGEN is not just a clothing brand; it is a cultural bridge, a narrative archive, a homecoming stitched in cotton, wool, and memory. Founded in 2024 by Jimmie Temesgen Sandberg […]
TWYG Africa Textile Talks 2025: Where Africa’s Textile Legacy Fuels Industry Change
This July, Cape Town will host a major gathering focused on the future of textiles in Africa. From 28 July to 1 August 2025, Africa Textile Talks returns with a three-day summit and a five-day exhibition at the V&A Waterfront. Set between Workshop17 and Church House, the event will bring together designers, researchers, artisans, policymakers, […]
Where Meaning Meets Material: Dahomey Paris and the Soul of Luxury
The first time I spoke with Farid Hounkponou, I realized this wasn’t going to be a regular chat about fashion. He didn’t start by talking about trends or collections. Instead, he talked about people, stories, and why every piece of clothing should mean something. “Dahomey Paris brings together the soul of African tradition and the […]
What Makes a Brand African? Rethinking Made in Africa Fashion
While African fashion has reached greater heights—the question of what makes a brand “African” resists easy answers. It can’t be answered through surface-level aesthetics or generic motifs, but instead, it demands a deeper interrogation of history, structure, and power. At first glance, one might say an African brand is one founded or designed by an […]
Eloghosa Osunde’s Necessary Fiction Is a Cultural Earthquake
“Necessary Fiction is coming.” Eloghosa Osunde doesn’t say this like a casual heads-up. She says it like a prophecy. Like something already in motion. When she speaks about her second novel, her voice carries the same urgency as the text itself—a novel that refuses to sit quietly on a shelf. Osunde’s debut, Vagabonds!, shook tables […]
WORN OUT — Part II: How African Governments Are Responding to the Textile Waste Crisis
Western wardrobes don’t end in Europe or North America. They spill quietly, devastatingly onto African soil, packed into shipping containers and sold in open-air markets under the guise of “donations.” But from Accra to Kigali, Dakar to Lusaka, something is shifting. The bales keep arriving. The markets keep choking. But across the continent, a patchwork […]
Legacy African Fashion Houses That Defined the Continent’s Style Future
Fashion across the continent has always been rooted in craftsmanship, talent, and boundless creativity—and nowhere is that more evident than in the pioneering legacy houses that rose to prominence from the 1980s onward. These houses wove an African narrative that resisted reductive stereotypes and demanded global recognition for its innovation and cultural depth. Their ateliers […]
Dakar Sound Project: How Senegal’s Youth Are Remixing Fashion, Music, and Memory
Photographer Khaled Fhemy Mamah and stylist Hélène Redolfi created Dakar Sound Project to document how the city’s music culture shows up in what people wear. Shot at Maison de la Culture Urbaine, Torobee Distribution (a vinyl archive), and across Dakar’s streets, the editorial pairs models with instruments—saxophones, trumpets, synthesizers—and clothes from local designers working in […]
Inside Oshobor: Where Heritage, Healing, and Haute Craft Collide
In 2020, during one of the hardest periods of his life, Peter Odion sat quietly in his Benin City workshop, mending torn fabric by hand. What began as therapy would soon become a signature. Stitch by stitch, he transformed pain into process, and process into fashion. That quiet moment laid the foundation for Oshobor, the […]